Does this thing still work?

I can’t believe I haven’t touched this blog since 2014. 6 years today actually! I didn’t even mean to write on the actual anniversary of my last post…I’ve been considering reviving the blog since last month and decided I didn’t have anything to lose so here we are. It will be fun to get back in here and document the final renovations of this house and what shreds of sanity I might have left after this is all said and done.

So much has changed over the last 6 years. We closed on this house in December 2010 and went in full force with demo and renovations. Ran out of money, ran out of steam, and then life took over. Just a very brief recap for myself more than anyone else…not sure anyone even still gets updates on this to be honest! 🙂

Last time I posted, I had just had surgery on my foot (not surprising to me bunion surgery recovery is what draws most people back to my blog! ha!) and was in the process of finding a new job since the company I was working for was acquired. Fast forward a few months and I ended up changing careers, starting a whirlwind 5+ years in exec level corporate HR. Between 2015 and 2020, my father passed away, Ray nearly died on me and we had more than 6 months of recovery for him to get back to normal, my job was absolutely insane, we lost Dylan, Annie and Maggie, and gained Jack, Wesley, Neil and Leia. Good and bad in many ways, but we dealt with it all.

December 2019 started off with some “fun” and the company I had been working at essentially imploded over the course of a few months just as COVID was brewing. Before I could even get my head around what was happening, I was thrown into a new job with a company that acquired what remained and locked down at home thanks to this lovely pandemic.

As we all know, 2020 has been an utter shit show. I don’t censor my language in my HR job and I won’t here. I am grateful that given our careers, Ray and I have been able to keep working and have the ability to work from home for the most part. Ray started back in person at school last week, but until then we were both in our safe bubble at home.

With all the craziness happening in the world, and quite frankly, partly attributed to being stuck in this house since March of this year, I started getting the idea it was time to finish the renovation we started when we bought it. We are not going anywhere as much as we have talked about moving out of state. This is our forever home so let’s get it done.

Financially, we are lucky enough to feel stable enough to take it on and I’m home during the day to oversee anyone who is here working on certain things that are out of our realm of DIY ability (or things I don’t want Ray to break his hands on since he is a ceramic artist) so why keep putting it off?

We started demo on Tuesday in one of our bathrooms. The hall one that I’ve used exclusively since we moved in. All of its pink and blue tile and fake stained glass window leading into our family room grew on me. I will admit I actually cried a bit when I realized it was all going to be torn up. I don’t love the pink and blue, the broken tiles, the sink that never stops leaking, the random window into my own family room, but this bathroom has been part of the home we have lived in for almost 10 years and in this house since it was built in 1953!

Let the fun begin! Pictures coming once I remember how this blog works.